“Warden … Hal … I …” Nothing I tried made any sense.
He raised the pistol again, pointing it between Brutal and me, not listening. His bloodshot eyes had gotten very wide. And here came Harry Terwilliger, being more or less pulled along by our big boy, who was wearing his wide and daffily charming smile.
“Coffey,” Moores breathed. “John Coffey.” He pulled in breath and yelled in a voice that was reedy but strong: “Halt! Halt right there, or I shoot!”
From somewhere behind him, a weak and wavery female voice called: “Hal? What are you doing out there? Who are you talking to, you fucking cocksucker?”
He turned in that direction for just a moment, his face confused and despairing. Just a moment, as I say, but it should have been long enough for me to snatch the long-barrelled gun out of his hand. Except I couldn’t lift my own hands. They might have had weights tied to them. My head seemed full of static,
like a radio trying to broadcast during an electrical storm. The only emotions I remember feeling were fright and a kind of dull embarrassment for Hal.
Harry and John Coffey reached the foot of the steps. Moores turned away from the sound of his wife’s voice and raised the gun again. He said later that yes, he fully intended to shoot Coffey; he suspected we were all prisoners, and that the brains behind whatever was happening were back by the truck, lurking in the shadows. He didn’t understand why we should have been brought to his house, but revenge seemed the most likely possibility.
Before he could shoot, Harry Terwilliger stepped up ahead of Coffey and then moved in front of him, shielding most of his body. Coffey didn’t make him do it; Harry did it on his own.
“No, Warden Moores!” he said. “It’s all right! No one’s armed, no one’s going to get hurt, we’re here to help!”
“Help?” Moores’s tangled, tufted eyebrows drew together. His eyes blazed. I couldn’t take my eyes off the cocked hammer of the Buntline. “Help what? Help who?”
As if in answer, the old woman’s voice rose again, querulous and certain and utterly lost: “Come in here and poke my mudhole, you son of a bitch! Bring your asshole friends, too! Let them all have a turn!”
I looked at Brutal, shaken to my soul. I’d understood that she swore – that the tumor was somehow making her swear – but this was more than swearing. A lot more.
“What are you doing here?” Moores asked us again. A lot of the determination had gone out of his voice
– his wife’s wavering cries had done that. “I don’t understand. Is it a prison break, or…”
John set Harry aside – just picked him up and moved him over – and then climbed to the stoop. He stood between Brutal and me, so big he almost pushed us off either side and into Melly’s holly bushes.
Moores’s eyes turned up to follow him, the way a person’s eyes do when he’s trying to see the top of a tall tree. And suddenly the world fell back into place for me. That spirit of discord, which had jumbled my thoughts like powerful fingers sifting through sand or grains of rice, was gone. I thought I also understood why Harry had been able to act when Brutal and I could only stand, hopeless and indecisive, in front of our boss. Harry had been with John… and whatever spirit it is that opposes that other, demonic one, it was in John Coffey that night. And, when John stepped forward to face Warden Moores, it was that other spirit – something white, that’s how I think of it, as something white – which took control of the situation. The other thing didn’t leave, but I could see it drawing back like a shadow in a sudden strong light.
“I want to help,” John Coffey said. Moores looked up at him, eyes fascinated, mouth hanging open.
When Coffey plucked the Buntline Special from his hand and passed it to me, I don’t think Hal even knew it was gone. I carefully lowered the hammer. Later, when I checked the cylinder, I would find it had been empty all along. Sometimes I wonder if Hal knew that. Meanwhile, John was still murmuring.